


until the sinking stops

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: KNBxNBA, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 15:20:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14917844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: Shuuzou can’t blame Daiki for moping.





	until the sinking stops

**Author's Note:**

> happy fake birthday shuu
> 
> happy more of this 'knb x the real nba' kick lmao (but we're back to nets shuu)

Daiki blinks up at the hazy sky, rubbing his eyes with the side of his fist. It’s cute; Shuuzou’s smile spreads like a broken yolk on a frying egg, but Daiki doesn’t catch it. He’s still half-asleep; he pulls his sunglasses down his face and leans his head on Shuuzou’s shoulder.

“We can come back later.”

“It’ll be too hot and crowded,” says Shuuzou. “You’ve got to start living like a normal person. I’m not going to go to bed at two and wake up at eleven, and I do want to spend time with you.”

“It’s the offseason,” says Daiki.

If he leans any longer, his cheek will be impressed with the seam at the shoulder of Shuuzou’s t-shirt. It still dents as easily as it had when it was soft with baby fat and Daiki’s smile didn’t so much as come easy but never leave his face and he’d fall asleep on Shuuzou’s shoulder on the bus back from the game, the ends of his hair fluttering as the bus bounced over uneven roads. Shuuzou steps forward to cross the street. He glances back; Daiki’s rubbing at his cheek but following, and he makes up the distance in two strides (Shuuzou could curse his legs for being so long).

When the playoffs had begun and Shuuzou’s season had ended, the trees were bare. The park was brown and grey, a few green buds if you wished and squinted, and a cold snap in the air that matched Shuuzou’s own disappointment. Another year of no answers for the fans and a high draft pick that had been traded away, another year wasted that Shuuzou won’t get back.

Daiki feels the same way, even though his season had ended four wins away from glory and another notch in the bedpost of history. His team’s future is just as bleak as Shuuzou’s, except the Cavs have Daiki. They have recent success, a recent championship, to keep seats warm and lights on in the arena. But they’d been so close and all they’d gotten was a slam on the reset button. A skid backwards in the wind tunnel.

Shuuzou can’t blame Daiki for moping. He can’t say either of them has it objectively worse. But he can get Daiki out of bed and into the sunshine, a walk in the park that had so suddenly, when Daiki was in the middle of taking down the Raptors, morphed from brown to white and pink to something greener than a Celtics fan convention. He can self-reflect and feel down all he wants to and all he has to here, but there’s enough outside of him, too. Joggers and dog-walkers, ducks and pigeons and squirrels, kids operating on their own time zone and dragging their parents out the door.

Daiki’s not looking at any of them; a pigeon drunk-stumbles toward his ankle and then swerves to the side but he doesn’t flinch. He’s staring up at the clouds again, hands in his pockets. The stretched and faded shirt he’s wearing barely covers the top of his shorts; it’s one of Shuuzou's from college, and Shuuzou hadn’t even registered that until now. It looks better on Daiki than on him, for too many reasons, but the one at the forefront of his mind is his own history draped over Daiki’s body where the two don’t naturally collide. Sweat is gathering under the neckline of Shuuzou’s own t-shirt; he scratches at it. He doesn’t want to be a gross kind of possessive.

“Excuse me?”

Shuuzou turns. A pair of kids, elementary school age (maybe, all kids are starting to look the same kind of young to Shuuzou now) are looking up at Daiki from a few feet away. Daiki looks at Shuuzou; Shuuzou looks back. They’re definitely looking at him.

“Are you Aomine?” says the girl.

Daiki nods. “You caught me.”

“Are you in disguise?” says the boy.

His companion (friend? sister?) frowns at him. “People don’t go in disguise in real life. I think he just didn't think he’d meet any Cavs fans in Brooklyn.”

“The Nets suck,” says the boy.

It only stings a little bit, mostly because he’s right.

“So do the Knicks,” the boy adds, and Shuuzou cracks a grin (Tatsuya’s going to hear about this later; it’s been a little too long between good chirp-fests at each other’s teams’ well-deserved expenses.

“We didn’t win either,” says Daiki. “We got swept.”

“But you got a triple double!” says the girl. “And you scored fifty points in the second game; you should have won the first two.”

Daiki does not repeat that they didn’t win, and for a moment Shuuzou can see it on his lips. It’s falling away, though, not from Daiki pulling it back inside of him as he retreats inside himself, but when Daiki smiles and pushes the sunglasses up onto his forehead.

“Thanks.”

“And that was not a foul on Kise! He played that dirty; he was totally flopping and I can’t believe they didn’t give him a tech for embezzlement—”

“Embellishment.”

“Shut up, Kevin!”

Shuuzou bites back a laugh; he’s reminded of his own siblings at close to that age, constant interruptions collapsing into fights like a toy that folds in on itself.

“I’ll tell Kise you agree with me,” says Daiki, and the little girl looks both awestruck and a little scared.

An older woman—can’t be more than ten years older than he is, Shuuzou supposes—who looks a bit like both kids catches Shuuzou’s eye. She’s hanging back, but watching her children with a firm eye.

“They’re not bothering him, are they?”

“Nah,” says Shuuzou. “The opposite, I think.”

The woman smiles, highlighting the lines around her mouth. “Sorry, but are you—?”

“Yeah. I hope you’re not a Nets fan.”

“I am,” she says. “My kids…aren’t.”

“Rooting for a winning team’s fun,” says Shuuzou. “I wouldn’t blame you for giving up on us.”

“As long as you don’t give up on yourselves.”

“Can’t speak for management. But, uh. Come to our games anyway.”

That gets another smile, and when Shuuzou looks back to Daiki and the kids he feels a little bit warmer. Daiki’s signing the kids’ plain t-shirts with a Sharpie from his pocket, and they’re both crowding in on him. Daiki doesn’t look hemmed in at all, though; he’s coming forward like a stem between cracks in the sidewalk. As the kids leave with their mother, Daiki looks back at Shuuzou.

“One on one?”


End file.
